The attached article brings up some good issues
for the TSCM profession to consider, and sweep
folks should read, and then re-read the article.
One thing that needs to be remembered is that the
bug can “ look like anything innocent".
-jma
http://www.swatdigest.com/archives/06NOV/illusions_perceptions.html
Illusions and Perceptions
By Tomer Benito
Awhile ago I visited a major transportation hub
on the East Coast and delivered a seminar to the
local security force. It wasnÂ’t the conventional
security force, but merely a police squad
containing guns, badges, and uniforms—American
Pride. I discussed issues about their security
protocol, a collection of orders and
recommendations that nobody really reads and more than that - implements.
One of the subjects that caught my attention in
their protocol was the following: “When
discovering an object that is obviously a bomb,
it is a requirement to evacuate the area.”
I read it over and over again, searching for
images and photos. Due to the absence of
visualization, I grabbed one of the officers in
the squad and asked, “Can you tell me what a bomb looks like?”
The officer looked at me with startled eyes and
asked. “What?” he replied, not quite determining
how he should answer the question..
I gave him a plain sheet of paper and pen and said, “Draw me a bomb.”
He looked at me with a stare normally seen in
small kids who did something wrong. His stare
changed to acquiescence when he realized that I
was serious. He thought for awhile and then drew
something that looked like five tubes arranged
together, a round circle with a dial in the
middle of the sheet, and curly lines on the edges
of the tubes. Apparently satisfied with his
artwork, the officer handed the drawing back to me with a grin.
Like a father examining his sonÂ’s first art
piece, I studied the drawing. After a moment that
took almost an eternity, my hand became numb and
my patience ran out. I couldnÂ’t determine what he
drew, so without insulting his artistic skills, I asked, “What is it?”
“ It’s a bomb!” the officer said firmly with a
hint of surprise for my poor recognition.
“Dynamite sticks,” he said and pointed towards
the tubes. “A clock,” he continued with the
interpretation and rotated his finger around the
circle in the middle of the page. “And wires,” he
concluded gesturing toward the curly lines he drew.
I smiled in understanding and asked, “Which one
is the blue wire and which one is the red?”
“ That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?” he smiled back.
“ From where did you get this image?” I inquired.
When he didnÂ’t respond, I tried a different
angle. “Have you ever seen such a bomb in reality?” I asked.
The officer replied promptly, “Not in reality,
but in a lot of movies.” That was exactly the answer I was expecting.
I turned the sheet over and sketched out my own
drawing (I was good at this when I was young). I
drew a metal cylinder (emphasizing attention to
the shiny surface) with a big square in the
middle of it. I drew four shapes in the form of a
digital clock. “The numbers are in red,” I
informed the officer. “And it counts down, of
course,” I added. He nodded. “Do you think this is also a bomb?” I asked.
“ Yes, I do,” the officer nodded in agreement.
“ So, does it matter what year the movie you saw was filmed?”
The officer looked puzzled. “What are you saying?” he asked.
I asked him this question in reply, “I’m saying
that television has changed our perspective
entirely. If you were the terrorist, how would
your bomb look – say, something a child would
recognize as a bomb, or something that nobody
would suspect – something that would stay in
place long enough for the execution of an explosion?”
“ It makes sense that it would be something that
people are used to seeing,” the officer answered
after a few seconds of deliberation.
“ So what does a bomb look like?” I asked again.
“ Like anything innocent,” he concluded.
The media changes our perspective towards things
that are commonly known. Did you ever pay
attention to the weapons the bad guys on TV
series and movies hold? The type of weapon is
almost always an AK-47. Avtomat Kalashnikova was
invented in 1947 by Viktor Timofeevich
Kalashnikov. It is easy to infer by its name that
itÂ’s a Russian-made rifle. Unfortunately, the
Middle Eastern terrorists used this rifle in the
1970s. Some of them even drew the silhouette of
this weapon on their flags. Although its
existence is very rare in the US, the movie
industry places it constantly in the hands of the
bad guys. So are we always expecting to see them
use a Russian-made weapon? Because if someone
holds an M-16, he must be an undercover good guy
– he can’t be a terrorist, right?
Special agent Jack Bauer of the Emmy Award
winning TV series ‘24’ is another great example
of the perception we lose. We count on our
agencies to provide us with an up-to-date picture
of the bad guy down to the current haircut or
unshaved beard. In reality, as we all know, it
doesnÂ’t work that way. We watch on TV how the
powerful closed circuit cameras zoom-in on the
bad guyÂ’s face and within a split second, there
is a match between the bad guy and the
intelligence profile we have on him. In reality,
the algorithmic systems cannot do this great a
job, and it takes much more than a CCTV camera to
find a match. Instead of looking for the facial
features match, we should look at the behavioral
pattern, and we can find our bad guy because of
what he does and not who he is.
Let’s take the wanted “bad guy” for instance.
When he knows that he is hunted, he wonÂ’t be
exposed to us. He knows that we have cameras, and
law enforcement has been given his description. I
asked my bomb-drawing officer what he would have
done if he was the bad guy, and he replied that
he would disguise himself, not necessarily with a
wig, but probably with a hat and sunglasses.
“Would you avoid the security cameras and law
enforcement personal?” I asked him.
“ Of course I would. I’d keep my head down and
walk away as fast as I could without raising suspicion,” he replied.
All of a sudden, we are not looking for the exact
same man anymore. We are looking for the
suspicious behavior. A man who is walking into a
public area with his head down and a pair of
sunglasses that covers half of his face could
possibly be someone who was just dumped by his
girlfriend. He could also be our bad guy. The way
to determine this is by engaging him in
conversation about anything. If he runs away – we
have a logical reason to believe that he has something to hideÂ…
Another aspect that is seen vastly on TV and
movies is the super-computer that pin points
everything. A phone call conversation from one
man to another becomes the lead to a large scale
hunt and an apprehension of a sleeper cell on
American soil. Hilarious!!! If you were the
terrorist, would you say over a phone call
conversation “I’m going to blow up a place”? And
if you wonÂ’t, what are the codes you use? What
are the ones NSA uses to feed those super-computers?
I can make an analogy for the business world – the fish and the fishing rod.
If I provide you with one fish – you’ll eat, but you won’t survive without me.
If I provide you with a fishing rod and teach you
how to fish – you won’t need me to survive.
I grew up with a TV commercial on how to identify
suspicious objects. It was a commercial for kids
in the early 1980s. It showed a shopping bag
beneath a bus station bench. The narrator said,
“A suspicious object is one that is not in its
natural place, and that nobody knows to whom it
belongs.” The image changed to a few other
abandoned briefcases, a shoebox, and a plastic
container near a playground. The narrator
instructed that we shouldnÂ’t have to determine
whether the object was threatening or not but
just to evacuate the area and to inform the
police. Talk about kidsÂ’ empowerment!
I have a lot to say about television, but one of
the worst things it does to us (except for
numbing our minds, selling sex in every context,
and promoting violent values), is change our
perspective towards what matters the most. I
wonder where Jack Bauer and CTU will be during the next terrorist strike.
Tomer Benito
Counter Terrorism Specialist
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Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467
127 Eastern Avenue #291 Web:
http://www.tscm.com/
Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 E-mail: mailto:jm..._at_tscm.com
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Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:17 CST